Investment Week is delighted to be hosting the 25th Fund Manager of the Year Awards on Thursday 25 June LIVE ONLINE. This year's ceremony is a key part of Investment Week's 25th anniversary celebrations in 2020 and we will be presenting awards for Outstanding Fund Manager over 25 Years and Outstanding Contribution over 25 Years on the night. A flagship event for the investment industry for a quarter of a century, the Fund Manager of the Year Awards honour fund managers and groups at the top of their game who have demonstrated consistently strong performance for investors and whom the judging panel believe have the potential to continue to outperform in the future.

Professional Adviser and Retirement Planner are proud to host the 2020 Women In Financial Advice Awards, which will celebrate the achievements of women working within the financial advice community and also the broader financial services sector.

A comprehensive 360-degree view of financial advice underpins PA360 Conference. With an unmissable line-up of dynamic speakers ranged across three streams focusing on what matters most to advisers PA360 will inform, educate and inspire, allowing delegates to meet new service providers and professional partners, and provide invaluable networking opportunities.

In this exclusive magazine exploring the evolution of quality and income ETF strategies, King reveals that each ETF follows an investment strategy developed by the group's in-house research team that leverages fundamental active insights to inform the factor definitions and applies portfolio construction principles to mitigate the unintended biases.

David Cumming, Aviva Investors' chief investment officer for equities, last year witnessed turbulent times for UK equities but he remains positive about the market in which he has a personal as well as a professional stake.

This sent oil prices plummeting toward $30 per barrel (bbl), setting the scene for a historic week across financial markets.

Equities suffered their worst down day since Black Monday in 1987; we saw an extraordinary liquidity crunch in US Treasuries; and the spread of the ICE Bank of America US High Yield index, where energy companies account for more than 11% of market capitalisation, raced above 700 basis points.

Selling in high yield was broad-based. In fact, the biggest declines were in the larger, more liquid names, partly because of outflows from exchange-traded funds and partly because these were the easiest securities to offload. This is likely to create attractive value opportunities.

When assessing these opportunities, it is important to recognise Covid-19 and the oil price war will affect completely different sectors.

The picture remains uncertain, but we also think the impact of Covid-19 will likely be short term and temporary, whereas the impact of lower oil prices could be longer term and, in many cases, permanent.

Across strategies, we are underweight default risk, with a bias towards more liquid parts of the market.

Caution is advisable, as there is still a lot of uncertainty about how big an impact Covid-19 might have on the US consumer and the broader economy. We are keeping a sharp eye on US initial jobless claims, in particular.

At this point, however, we see this as an opportunity to seek out robust balance sheets in these sectors while they are trading at material discounts to par.

Oil and gas

The oil and gas sector looks very different. Here we anticipate a 12- to 18-month price war that anchors the price of oil between $25/bbl and $45/bbl.

Very little exploration is economical at these levels and a number of US shale producers do face near-term debt maturities. This implies permanent impairment and rising defaults in the sector.

There are likely to be value opportunities, however. The exploration and production (E&P) sub-sector has been cutting costs and rationalising its capital expenditure since its last crisis in 2015-16.

This limits what they can do this time around, but we are already seeing dividend cuts and other welcome actions. Those who survive may emerge in a stronger state.

When high yield spreads have traded at 600 basis points or more, or loans in the low-90c range, these have tended to be attractive entry points for long-term investors in the past.

The amount of issues trading at distressed levels has doubled in the past few weeks. Defaults will rise, but we believe the increase will likely be contained almost exclusively in the energy E&P sector.

So-called 'fallen angels', downgraded from the investment grade universe, may also create value in energy, consumer products and cyclical sectors such as autos.

Historically speaking, we have seen about $30bn fall into high yield per year. This has provided a good source of ideas in the past and we are focused on taking advantage of opportunities that arise, as we could see slightly more than $30bn of fallen angels just over the near term.

Amid the turmoil, it is critical to be selective. However, we are already seeing some of the most attractive opportunities to add value to high-yield portfolios we have had in four years.